wanted to achieve communication within the group, to help each of them move out of their shells and begin to develop new relationships, both with others and with themselves. The one thing most of them had in common was a feeling of guilt, a burden that had caused them to withdraw. Yet, while they blamed themselves for having been raped or tortured or otherwise abused, their burden was compounded by their having lost all trust in the world. I’d worked hard with them to forge the fragile bond that now existed among them, and I was worried that the addition of Eva Blau might separate them.
During our last session, the group had gone to a deeper level than we’d ever managed before. After our usual opening discussion, I’d made an attempt to put Marek Semiovic under deep hypnosis. All my past efforts had failed; he’d been unfocused and defensive.
In hypnosis, the practitioner may try to find a starting point, often a familiar or idealized place that the subject can imagine and from which he can proceed without fear or anxiety. I hadn’t yet found that starting point with Marek.
“A house? A soccer field? A forest?” I suggested.
“I don’t know,” Marek replied, as usual.
“Well, we have to start somewhere.”
“But where?”
“Try to imagine the place you’d have to return to in order to understand the person you are now,” I suggested.
“Zenica, out in the country,” said Marek, his tone neutral. “Zenica-Doboj.”
“Good,” I said, making a note. “Do you know what happened there?”
“Everything happened there, in a big building made of dark wood, like a castle, a landowner’s house, with a steep roof and turrets and verandas.”
The group was focused now; everyone was listening; they all realized that Marek had suddenly opened a number of inner doors.
“I was sitting in an armchair, I think,” Marek said hesitantly. “Or on some cushions. Anyway, I was smoking a Marlboro while… there must have been hundreds of girls and women from my home town passing by me.”
“Passing by?”
“Over the course of a few weeks… They would come in through the front door, and then, they were taken up the main staircase to the bedrooms.”
“Was it a brothel?” asked Jussi, in his strong Norrland accent. “I don’t know what went on there. I don’t know anything, really,” Marek replied quietly.
“Did you ever see the upstairs?” I asked.
He rubbed his face with his hands and took a deep breath. “I have this memory,” he began. “I walk into a little room and I see one of my teachers from high school, and she’s tied to a bed, naked, with bruises on her hips and thighs.”
“What happens?”
“I’m standing just inside the door with a kind of wooden stick in my hand- and I can’t remember anything else.”
“Try,” I said calmly.
“It’s gone.”
“Are you sure?”
“I can’t… I can’t do any more.”
“All right, fine, that’s enough,” I said.
“Wait a minute,” he said, and sat without speaking for a long time. Then he sighed, rubbed his face, and stood up.
“Marek?”
“I don’t remember anything!” he said, his voice shrill.
I made a few notes; I could feel Marek watching me all the time.
“I don’t remember, but everything happened in that freaking house,” he said, looking at me intently. I nodded.
“Everything that’s me- it’s in that wooden house!”
“The haunted house,” said Lydia, from her seat beside him.
“Exactly,” he said, “it was a haunted house,” and when he laughed, his face was etched with anguish.
I checked my watch again. In an hour I was to meet with the hospital board to present my research. If they didn’t agree to continue my funding, I would have to start winding down both the research and the therapy. So far, I hadn’t had time to start feeling nervous. I went over to the sink and rinsed my face, then stood for a while looking at myself in the mirror and trying to summon up a smile before I left the bathroom. As I was locking the door of my office, a young woman stopped in the corridor just a few steps away.
“Erik Maria Bark?”
Her dark, thick hair was caught up in a knot at the back of her neck, and when she smiled at me, deep dimples appeared in her cheeks. She looked happy and smelled of hyacinth, of tiny flowers. She was wearing a doctor’s coat, and her badge indicated that she was an intern.
“Maja Swartling,” she said, holding out her hand. “I’m one of your greatest admirers.”
“I’m honoured,” I said.
“I’d love to have the opportunity to work with you while I’m here,” she said, with an uncommon directness I found appealing.
“Work with me?”
She nodded and blushed. “I find your research to be incredibly exciting.”
“Frankly, I don’t even know if there’s going to be any more research,” I explained. “I hope the board of directors is as enthusiastic as you are.”
“What do you mean?”
“My funding only lasts until the end of the year.” My imminent appearance before the board suddenly loomed up. “Right now I have an important meeting.”
Maja jumped to one side. “I’m sorry,” she said. “God, I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it,” I said, smiling at her. “Walk me to the lift.”
She blushed again and we set off together. “Do you think there’ll be a problem renewing your funding?” she asked anxiously.
The usual procedure was for the applicant to talk about his or her research- results, targets, and time frame- but I always found it difficult, because no matter how meticulously I presented my case, I knew I’d inevitably run into difficulties because of the pervasive prejudice against hypnosis.
“If psychotherapy is a soft science, Maja, hypnosis is even softer. By its very nature, even the most exhaustive research in the field leads to relatively inconclusive results,” I said.
“But if they read all your reports, the most amazing patterns are emerging. Even if it is too early to publish anything.”
“You’ve read all my reports?” I asked sceptically. “There are certainly plenty of them,” she replied dryly.
We stopped at the lift.
“What do you think about my ideas relating to engrams?” I said, to test her.
“You’re thinking about the patient with the injured skull?”
“Yes,” I said, trying to hide my surprise.
“Interesting,” she said. “The fact that you’re going against conventional wisdom on the way memory is dispersed throughout the brain.”
“Any thoughts of your own on the subject?”
“I think you should intensify your research into the synapses and concentrate on the amygdala.”
“I’m impressed,” I said, pressing the button for the lift.
“You have to get the funding.”
“I know.”
“What happens if they say no?”
“If I’m lucky, I’ll be given enough time to wind down the therapy and help my patients into other forms of treatment.”
